Al-Ayyam is 'reporting' this morning a classic piece of PNA propaganda, employing all the ‘buzz-words’ of war crimes. The citations brought here in double-inverted comas are cited in the article as direct quotations. I have translated these as accurately as I can, word for word.

Incidentally, I have been asked by one reader if I can indent direct translations and citations to distinguish them more clearly from my own commentary. If any of the readers of this cite could inform me how to do this using the Blogger program, I would be most grateful.

The article reports that PNA is to call upon the UN Security Council to hold an immediate meeting to impose sanctions upon the Israeli government. They are also calling upon the ‘Quartet’ (USA, Russia, EU and UN) to freeze their relations with Israel until Israel “ceases its attacks against the rights of the Palestinian people”. He explained that these “abominable Israeli crimes are a new attempt to subdue the Palestinian people through the massacres that the Palestinian civilians face”.

In a statement from the Palestinian leadership issued by the Palestinian News Agency, they “called upon the UN Security Council to take its responsibilities in the fact of the war of extermination that the Sharon government is carrying out against the Palestinian civilians under the auspices its sieges and its closure of all the cities and areas.” The leadership said “the continued neglecting of the International Security Council’s role in spite of our repeated calls upon the council to fulfill its role and our complete readiness for the ‘security pacification’ [an unusual term for ‘ceasefire’] leaves the Palestinian people at the mercy of the policy of force and the law of jungle in which Sharon, his government and his occupation army continue, paying no heed to human rights and the Geneva Convention. We call upon the International Security Council to stop the Israeli war of extermination against the Palestinan people and we hope that the International Security Council will take its responsibilities incumbent upon it in the [UN] Charter” .

The leadership asked of “the firm, patient and fighting Palestinian People more staying power, firmness and patience and complete national unity in the face of the Israeli war of extermination, and there is no alternative but that our people will be victorious in the battle for freedom and independence just as all fighting peoples have been victorious against occupation and colonialization and wars of extermination and ethnic cleansing.”